Surprise in Chile’s elections: due to gender parity law, 11 women must cede the seats they won for the constituency to men

After the historic day of “mega elections” that Chile experienced this weekend, at least 11 women will have to give up their won seats to men due to the correction of results by gender ensure parity in the Constitutional Convention.

Remember that during this weekend, Chile went to the polls to vote for councilors, mayors, regional governors and 155 constituent voters that they will have to write a new constitution for the country.

The delivery of the results of these “mega elections” largely favored the independents and sectors of the new Chilean left, which was a surprise for the political class, deal a blow to traditional parties.

However, when it comes to results, The correction of results by sex has also been applied to ensure parity between the two sexes in the Constitutional Convention. This system adopted in March of last year indicates that after the count, if parity between men and women occurs “naturally” in a neighborhood, no correction is made.

But in the event that the conventional elected representatives in a constituency of one sex are more numerous than the other, a candidate of the over-represented sex with fewer votes is replaced by another candidate of the under-represented sex with a greater number of votes .

Until, 77 women and 78 men would constitute the Constitutional Convention, and there would be 20 transfers in total between the two sexes, which also includes indigenous peoples. Especially these numbers may vary as the count continues to unfold.

How was this policy applied?

Although for the moment the results are still preliminary, at least 11 women who got a lot of votes they will have to give way to men.

In the 13th arrondissement, which brings together the metropolitan municipalities of El Bosque, La Cisterna, Lo Espejo, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, San Miguel and San Ramón; independent candidate Natalia Aravena will have to give way to communist Marcos Barraza, who got three thousand votes less than Aravena.

In addition, in district 6 which brings together 26 towns in the fifth region of Chile, independent candidate Rocío Veas would cede his seat to Miguel Ángel Botto.

This logic also worked for indigenous peoples, where 4 transfers took place. An example of this happened in the Mapuche people list, where Carmen Caifil is expected to cede her quota to her counterpart Victorino Antile.

Men would also give up seats

As expected, this formula also worked for men, of which at least 5 will have to give up their seats. women to ensure parity. For example, in district 14 of the metropolitan region, right-wing candidate Jaime Coloma is expected to hand over his post to Claudia Castro, independent but linked to the Chilean right.

A similar case is expected to occur in District 22 located in the Araucanía region, where the candidate Cristian Greenhill of the National Renovation (RN) political party, is also expected to give way to Ruth Hurtado, independent but linked to RN.

Meanwhile, a similar scenario is expected to be replicated in District 16 of Chile’s Sixth Region, where the socialist Roberto Santa Cruz would transfer his quota to Adriana Cancino, independent linked to the Socialist Party.

Expert balance

Pamela Figueroa, scholar at the University of Santiago (Usach), pointed out that these “mega elections” made it clear that when female candidates are proposed in areas of strong electoral competition, these do not lose their competitive power as was previously believed.

“Those who drew up the party lists always said there were no eligible womenThey place them in non-competitive districts. But when you got a parity list, ordered with the ‘zebra method’ – that is to say with interspersed names – and leading with women has shown that they are competitive», Pointed out Figueroa.

Regarding the entry of men through the gender parity system, Figueroa pointed out that “I think this is good news because it is proven that what we promoted was not a standard or a rule to overrepresent women., but so that they can compete on an equal footing ”.

Meanwhile, for the head of the political science career at the University of Chile, Claudia Heiss, argued that “parity may work in some cases in favor of men, in others in favor of women, but this is not the case: the objective of parity is to avoid the enormous distortion to the detriment of women that the political system has had “, finished.

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